HEAD OF THE CHARLES '07: Small But Mighty

After a big win, they are rewarded with an involuntary dip into New England’s spring waters—waters not yet warm in late May and early June, waters still chilled by the schizophrenic weather that marks racing season from beginning to end.

It is perhaps the sports tradition most similar to dousing a coach with Gatorade after a huge victory, but few coaches weigh under 125 pounds and are flung with ease into the icy depths of Lake Quinsigamond.

But coxswains won’t complain about that.

Their job is endlessly stressful and rife, perhaps, with misplaced blame, but a sopping wet and shivering coxswain is apt to be a happy one.

Why?

Only gold medal-winning coxswains are rewarded with ceremonious flops into the waters of the race course.

The tradition of collegiate rowing calls for it: after winning a championship race, oarsmen team up to victoriously fling their coxswain off the winner’s dock and into the waters below.

“After Sprints last year, we got to throw [varsity coxswain] Jess [Hoy] in,” says senior heavyweight varsity stroke George Kitovitz. “Then we threw [captain] Joe Medioli in there just for fun. It’s a great feeling.”

Nothing is so rewarding for coxswains nor so indicative of the size and role differential between coxswains and oarsmen on a crew. Like football coaches, coxswains receive the ceremonial bath of victory—a subtle but powerful tradition that sets coxswains apart as special and indispensable members of any championship crew.

It is easy to see the distinction between coxswains and rowers. Even the untrained eye, unfamiliar with the intricacies of boats and power 10s and stroke ratings, will note the overwhelming difference in size between coxswains and the rowers they urge forward throughout a 2,000-meter race.

But coxswains are misunderstood by those who only casually watch boats rowing by on the Charles River. A chorus of voices will often inquire, “But what do they do?”—if only because rowing appears so physically strenuous and the coxswain is the enigmatic, seemingly idle person watching all of the action from the best seat in the house.

“A lot of people have asked me, ‘Do you just sit in the boat and say “row” over and over again?’” says heavyweight men’s coxswain Drew Davis. “If anybody watched a crew and saw how hard those guys were working, somebody who was just sitting there and hearing the word ‘row’ over and over probably wouldn’t respond in the same way.”

Coxswains are the most singular and identifiable members of a crew, mostly because they are doing a job that nobody else in the boat does. Eight oarsmen perform in perfect sync throughout a race, their cadence and power output dictated by the coxswain who quite literally operates the driver’s seat.

“On the water, a coxswain has three jobs,” says lightweight men’s coxswain Kevin He. “You have to steer on the water, be the motivational person on the water, and be the coach on the water. You have a lot of multitasking to do.”

“The coxswain becomes the team captain as soon as you’re on the water,” Kitovitz adds. “You have to trust them. You have to believe in them. If you stop trusting and listening to the coxswain, you’re screwed.”

The coxswain remains exempt from the physical pain of a 2,000-meter race done at full throttle. But the enormous responsibility of steering, coaching, and gauging at which points to call for a strong push from the crew is burdensome enough.

Coxswains can’t call timeouts and regroup their crews—a luxury afforded to athletes in most other sports. They have one chance to steer a good course and direct the progress of oarsmen who must have unblinking faith in their coxswains, even if they make a mistake. And there is plenty of opportunity for error. A coxswain can commit steering mistakes that add of seconds to his or her crew’s race. They can call the final sprint too early, leaving their crews with no gas left and 100 meters still remaining between them and the finish. They can misjudge the strokes left in a race, telling their exhausted crew that just 20 strokes remain when there are in fact 30 needed to reach the line.

“If you make a mistake in judgment, it’s your mistake,” Davis says. “But you can prove to yourself and to your rowers that you make a difference by being skilled in another way. There’s no better race than one where a rower says, ‘You know, your call at 1,200 meters down really picked me up and helped me get going again.’”

It a coxswain’s unenviable task to gamble and delve into speculation, calculating how many strokes a boat needs to pull even with a crew ahead of it or to bury a crew behind it. The coxswain must simultaneously be the eyes and the voice of the boat.

Rowers are told from their first day on the water to keep their eyes in the boat, staring directly at the back of the person in front of them.

A coxswain, though, must know his or her boat’s location with respect to other boats at all times. Coxswains must know what their oarsmen need to hear to make a move.

And sometimes coxswains bear the brunt of that responsibility when something goes wrong.

“The more responsibility you get, the more you’re going to get the blame if things go wrong,” Kitovitz says. “At the same time, I’ve never had a situation where I thought it was the coxswain’s fault. Rowing is the ultimate team sport. Whatever goes wrong, we’re all equally responsible.”

“The big picture is that any mistake is the whole crew’s mistake,” says heavyweight men’s coxswain Joe Lin. “Everybody can do their part to fix things, but the biggest mistake for coxswains and rowers is not to do anything when things aren’t going as well as they could be.”

But coxswains aren’t only saddled with burdens and race-time stress. As the lone voice of the crew during a race, coxswains have the freedom to motivate and encourage in a way that inspires a whole boat’s response.

“I think of coxing as a leadership position,” says heavyweight men’s coxswain Ashley-Kay Fryer. “It comes across in the coxing, the voice and what comes out of your mouth. The rowers look to you on the water to make things come together.”

That responsibility gives coxswains more room for creativity than anybody else in a boat. Coxswains continually look for words, phrases, and sounds that will inspire a crew throughout a grueling and exhausting sprint for the finish line. Online rowing communities have MP3 recordings of coxswains during race time. Crews speak nostalgically of calls their coxswains made at crucial points of a race.

“I would say I’m incredibly aggressive and in away a little bit evil,” Davis says of his coxing style. “I think the best way to motivate your guys is to wait until the other boat messes up, point it out, then point out when you make a triumph. You can only hear you’re doing awesome so many times. Sometimes you need evidence that you’re doing better than the guys next to you, and I like to exploit that as much I can during a race.”

Coxswain calls are the only audible element of a crew race, save for the monotonous whoosh of the oars after the blade squares and feathers with each stroke. Their words narrate an otherwise silent race, offering encouragement and support to athletes whose goal it is to end a race with no strength left to row another stroke.

“Somebody being able to channel their voice to motivate eight great athletes in that kind of way is a very special thing,” Davis says. “You feel completely integrated in the win. It’s something you feel really proud of.”

The cold baths in Lake Quinsigamond, accompanied always by a gold medal, aren’t that bad, either.

—Staff writer Aidan E. Tait can be reached at atait@fas.harvard.edu.

precious tenths and hundredths